Although English is an official language, there’s no denying Filipino is the better medium for reaching Pinoys in the middle and lower economic classes, where discussions on matters of national interest are most felt and debated.
Emerging media powerhouse NET25 has made sure crucial opinion pieces can be read in Filipino, as well.
The network has long championed Filipino on air, from the Mata ng Agila newscasts to the chika-filled mornings of Kada Umaga.
The columnists in the “Voices & Columns” section of the NET25.com portal follow suit, writing the way many of their audience speak. Much of the country’s opinion writing still thrives in English. NET25 makes a conscious effort to diversify and “democratize” access to quality opinion pieces.
Caesar Vallejos (“The Bald Life”) writes in a formal, tightly cadenced Filipino, as in “Ang Tsuper at ang Heneral” on the EDSA busway controversy and “Kumukulo na,” which takes back the word katatagan from officials who use it to dodge accountability.
Weng Dela Fuente (“Datos Online”) uses the crisp newsroom Filipino of radio and TV news, keeping terms such as amici curiae in English so nothing is lost, as in “Jurisdiction Clash” on the impeachment vote threshold.
Misael Dungca III (“Anyare!?”) goes the other way, toward the Taglish of the jeepney and the group chat – siga, pasaway, kaniya-kaniya na – so a column on flood control accountability reads like a conversation, not a lecture.
Television veteran Wilma Galvante (“Fade In. Fade Out.”) writes in English but reaches for Filipino when only Filipino will do, as in “Ayan Na, Ayan Na Ang Ulan,” her tribute to the crowd-written flood anthem “BAHA.”
The numbers back the choice. The 2020 National Census found Filipino and Tagalog spoken at home in nearly forty percent of households, more than double the next language. A March 2023 Social Weather Stations survey found 96 percent of adults read Filipino and 75 percent think in it; for English the figures are 80 and 47. A column in Filipino simply reaches more people, and reaches them more deeply.
Education research points the same way. Time and again, various intellectual studies have found that school children taught in the language they speak at home outscored peers taught in second languages by more than twenty percentage points, even in English itself.
Language is not a barrier to learning; it is the road to it. A people that reads, argues and reasons in its own language keeps its identity and character, and a network that writes in that language earns a trust English alone cannot buy.
The “Voices & Columns” pieces are free to read anytime, anywhere on the NET25.com portal.
Written in Filipino. Read by Filipinos. Understood by all. NET25 continues to affirm its role as the “alternative mainstream” in Philippine broadcasting through a conscious and deliberate effort to use effective language to deliver sharp, biting and thought-provoking views by respected writers, social commentators and political pundits.
